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EVERGREEN MAGNOLIAS

- An expert guide to the best varieties.

It may be a surprise to learn magnolias were one of the first flowering plants to grace our planet. The flowers look so refined, so spectacular, you might imagine a lot of practice runs with tiny flowers before something this good emerged. Most magnolias hail from two main regions, the Appalachian mountain chain in eastern US or from China, Korea and Japan. There are many plant links between these two regions, both have a tulip tree, sweet gums or liquidambar and hydrangeas to name a few.

Most of these magnolia species are deciduous and back in the 1970s we only had two or three evergreen magnolias available here in New Zealand, and now we have a host of garden-worthy varieties. Back then we had the enormous but fabulous grandiflora type with impressive glossy leaves and pristine white cup flowers through the summer. But the plant was so big you needed an estate or a park to show them off to their best. Duncan and Davies nursery in Taranaki released four different clones back in the late 1970s but the ultimate size of the plants frightened most gardeners away.

Then some bright spark came up with a brilliant marketing ploy, naming a new variety ‘Little Gem’ and gardeners latched onto the word “little” when in fact the two words should be read together. This is a “little gem” in the same way as Elizabeth Taylor’s diamonds were little gems – enormous.

Yes ‘Little Gem’ does branch lower and seemingly stay more compact for a while, but it will still push your garden space to the limits and probably lift your tarmac driveway as well. Landscapers love them because they look instantly imposing in a new garden.

A few years back, I made a special pilgrimage to see Magnolia grandiflora growing in the woods of South Carolina in the US. I was hugely disappointed to find a bunch of scruffy dull trees growing under a canopy of taller deciduous trees. It was not at all what I imagined having seen majestic versions growing on the front lawns of the Carolina estates.

Whoever first took one of these dull plants from the shady forests and positioned it in full sun in pride of place near the grand entrance of a southern mansion was either a genius or incredibly lucky.

America has a host of magnolias, but apart from grandiflora they don’t feature much in our gardens. The much rarer American tree Magnolia virginiana is a small evergreen, producing flowers in succession all year round. But with one flower here and another next week, they don’t exactly set the garden world alight.

Our own Os Blumhardt from Whangārei selected a good form and named it ‘Autumn Queen’ and whilst it’s an improvement on the wild versions, it’s still intermittent.

Another tree species seen in parks and botanic gardens is Magnolia delavayi from China with huge battleship-grey leaves and flowers that last just one day. Nowadays we have pink-flowered versions with smaller bronzy leaves but they are still a collector’s item rather than a mainstream garden plant. I love this tree for its name as much as its looks.

Père Jean-Marie Delavay (1834–1895) was a French missionary and botanist who scoured western China in search of new plants. He sent home close on 300,000 pressed plants and completely overwhelmed the museums in France. I’m told they still haven’t all been studied properly.

The other evergreen species available in the 1970s were the enormous Michelia doltsopa and the smaller Michelia figo, also known as the port wine magnolia. Both were considered somewhat frost and wind tender, and both become trees, though the port wine can be clipped to keep it in bounds as a shrub. This compact plant has obscure grey and purple flowers which are easily missed except their fruity banana scent will draw you to the blooms.

The bigger Michelia doltsopa has been around for decades. There are two recognised forms in New Zealand, ‘Silver Cloud’ has lax flowers with lots of white petals, and ‘Rusty’ has tidier flowers with shorter petals (they are actually sepals and not petals at all – but let’s not quibble).

The latter has a tidier pyramid shape and the bonus of rusty undersides to the leaves, and of course both

Whoever first took one of these dull plants from the shady forests and positioned it in full sun in pride of place near the grand entrance of a southern mansion was either a genius or incredibly lucky.

varieties are cinnamon-scented. They flower from midwinter onwards for two months and so do not thrive in frosty regions. ‘Rusty’ is the more wind tolerant of the two, but both become huge and far too big for any city garden.

Back in the 1990s, that indefatigable plant breeder Os Blumhardt attempted to cross these two species, resulting in three named cultivars: ‘Mixed Up Miss’ with small pinky tinged fragrant flowers; ‘Bubbles’ with orb-like flowers; and ‘Touch of Pink’ which has larger open flowers. All three were exciting new plants at the time but all three become trees and are simply too big.

If you asked someone in the 1970s or 1980s, they would say there was only one evergreen magnolia, namely Magnolia grandiflora.

During the 1980s a host of new evergreen magnolias came into the country, notably Magnolia laevifolia or you may know it as Michelia yunnanensis. Now the botanists have had their fun with this species. It began as Michelia yunnanensis, then it was M. dianica. I’d just got my head around that and they changed it again to M. laevifolia. And to top it off, they named the whole genus as Magnolia rather than Michelia. How does one keep up?

Anyway this new plant created quite a stir when it arrived in New Zealand back in the 1980s. Peter Cave in Cambridge was the first to put a version on the market which he called ‘Velvet and Cream’. I still see this in garden centres and it’s still one of the best clones as the flowers are enormous.

The plant has winning ways: it’s hardy, tolerates windy sites, virtually any soil including heavy clay and copes remarkably well with drought. What’s not to like?

Added to this, it’s a handsome tidy evergreen bush smothered in deliciously scented white flowers in the spring and it has the admirable habit of dropping the flowers cleanly, so no half dead blooms dragging their heels and refusing to drop. It makes the perfect hedge and tolerates regular clipping or even a drastic prune to just stumps and trunks.

Mark Jury who has bred many fine deciduous magnolias, has also created several evergreen versions. His Fairy series called ‘Blush’, ‘Cream’ and ‘White’ are tall upright shrubs, ideal for screening and hedges. Being evergreen, free of pests, and tolerating regular pruning makes them

a viable alternative to camellias. Mark is busy creating new cultivars, hoping to increase the all pervading scent found in the parent plants.

I personally have dabbled with michelias, trying to create interesting clones and the best so far is a dwarf version we call ‘Church Mouse’. I wanted to call it ‘Mini Mouse’ but an agent pointed out the Disney Corporation might have something to say about that. This plant is the most compact magnolia I’ve ever seen and it typically grows just over one metre high and is smothered in scented white flowers through the month of September.

Then we get into the “collectors” choices, but you need a large garden to accommodate these exciting specimens. Magnolia maudiae was introduced from a hot steamy region in southern China – surprisingly hardy despite its origin – and is a small evergreen upright tree with glossy leaves the size of a small hand and laden with icy white flowers in spring. There do seem to be different forms available, some are rather open and leggy and some are more floriferous. So if you decide to buy one, check that it’s a good form. It’s too big for most suburban gardens, as are two similarly large tree versions available from time to time.

Both are gorgeously scented. M. champaca has bright grass green leaves as big as a hand and orange apricot flowers scented like candy. M. alba has spidery off-white glossy sepals and the flowers would be hard to find except the scent is exquisite. No wonder these trees were planted in the grounds of sacred temples all across Asia where the plant is hardy. Both these species are quite tender here in New Zealand and will not tolerate cold inland sites.

Many years ago on a visit to Os Blumhardt, he gave me a small cutting-grown plant of Magnolia dealbata from Mexico. The tree grew incredibly fast and is now 12m high and 12m wide, and has ridiculously large leaves. A few years later when Os visited our garden, he confessed his original tree had died and so he was able to take cuttings to start anew. It shows the value of sharing your plants with friends as your original may die.

Finally one extremely tall pillar of a plant called Magnolia garrettii hails from the mountains of north Thailand. Someone sent me seed way back in the early 1990s and now our original tree is 15m or more tall. Every year from early November through to January, the tree is laden with literally hundreds of fist-size rich red blooms.

Magnolia breeders, having seen the colour, were desperate to get these red genes into their breeding program. One breeder based in Chicago, Dennis Ledvina persuaded Vance Hooper to climb our tree year after year to send him pollen. If you fancy doing some breeding of your own, Vance Hooper’s Magnolia Grove nursery just north of New Plymouth sells M. alba, M. champaca, M. dealbata and M. garrettii.

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2021-09-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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